Who pays? Let’s see what the Japanese do

After my blog when I mentioned the programme where the Japanese were not having babies. Pete Aka @binaryape wrote a tweet to me a while back related to who pays on the first date…. Which you can see is related to the Japanese crisis in the lack of babies.

@cubicgarden You might be interested in this (Japanese perspectives on first date meal costs) http://www.tofugu.com/2013/10/25/should-men-or-women-be-paying-for-a-date/

Thanks Pete the reading was very educational.

In Japan, many people still believe that men paying for women is point of good manners and Koichi talked about this in What It’s Like A Dating a Japanese Guy as well. In fact, some guys even feel insulted, or that their pride was just given a ‘low-blow’, if a woman insists that she should pay for herself. This is standard dating-conduct for men in Japan. So, if you are a non-Japanese girl out on your first date with a Japanese guy, insisting to pay your half may be more hurtful than helpful to his pride.

But wait a minute! This has been changing quite a lot actually, especially amongst the newer generation of couples. Nowadays, many men wish more women would help pay for the date tab. It’s also more common for men to ask women to contribute somewhere between 20-30%. If at no point does the woman offer to pay for something, then the man may actually be lead to believe that she is not a generous or thoughtful person!

The whole thing is well worth reading as it goes back and forth with many examples from different cultures including the UK and China. I especially like the writers way of settling the bill with a game…

I had an ex-boyfriend who suggested that we decide who pays the bill by playing rock-paper-scissors. I accepted and from there on out we always decided that way. I found it pretty fair and kind of fun, too

UKNova without Torrents

UKNova has always been a interesting place for a clue about the future (specially when they use to share the data of how many people were downloading what, and from which country). Its existed way before bbc iplayer, 4od and all the ondemand services we all use now. It also has a very interesting stance on what content it does allow to be shared. But despite all that, they have always been on the wrong side of the fence for many in the industry.

UKNova is being forced to change. We have been issued with a “cease and desist” order by FACT (The Federation Against Copyright Theft).

Despite our efforts to cooperate with the UK media companies, FACT have stated: “ALL links or access to content provided by UKNova are infringing, unless it can be proven that explicit permission from the copyright holder for that content has been obtained”.

Whilst we believe that they are wrong both legally and morally on account of the strong ‘no commercial content’ stance that we have always taken, we are not in a position to be able to risk lengthy and costly court battles to prove this. Therefore we have no other option but to close down the trackers. It has not been an easy decision to take, but it is apparently our only option.

The argument by FACT sounds wrong too from what I know about UK copyright law but would I state my flat on it? Not a chance… I expect moving to Magnet links won’t help their dilemma either? Such a shame and a great loss, people will just seek their TV from elsewhere now, somewhere with less rules.

I remember UKnova was once asked to come into the BBC to meet content producers and defend their position as part of a BBC Backstage outreach (one of many engagement with the darknet/undernet, etc). The guys behind UKnova at the time were scared of arrest but they did come in and that discussion was one of the best discussions I’d seen. Thanks to Jem Stone and Ben Metcalfe for setting that up by the way…

Remember what I said about chilling effects?

Torrrentfreak just published about it before I did as I wasnt’ sure if I should, so I left it in the drafts for 12hours… thanks Mark Boas.